War Is Not the Answer, So War Becomes the Answer: Your Final Unaccountable-Executive-Branch Debate

Tonight, the existential absurdity of having Willard Romney, a complete creature of the financial elite, at even money to be elected president of the United States a mere four years after that same elite burned down the world economy and looted what was left, will be compounded by the existential absurdity of having two men argue about when — and, in Romney's case, if — we should remove our troops from a country in which young women are beheaded if they refuse to prostitute themselves.

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Regarding Afghanistan, the simple position of "Get the hell out of that godforsaken hellhole now" will have no advocate. (As far as I can tell, Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts is the only high-profile Democratic candidate in a contested race to make that argument as a flat statement.) The essential question of what in the hell more we can possibly hope to achieve in that country will almost surely go unasked by former Van Buren Administration State Department correspondent Bob Schieffer, let alone unanswered by the two men in the split-screen in Boca Raton. The president will say that the troops will be out of there by 2014. Romney will say that he thinks this is a swell idea, unless, of course, the generals tell him it isn't, in which case we'll likely be in there until Tagg's children are old enough to find ways to avoid serving in the military. The children of people who are not Romneys will continue to dodge shells in a place where the difference between friendly and unfriendly fire has become largely moot.

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Tonight, the existential and official absurdity of a controversy over what phrases the president used in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the American embassy in Libya — as though a form of words matters a damn to the dead and the mourning — will be compounded further by the existential absurdity of this controversy being ginned up by Romney, who has drawn his entire foreign-policy team from the sad detritus of a foreign-policy cult that lied us into a war based on stove-piped intelligence in which over 5,000 Americans, and god alone knows how many Iraqis, have died. This, of course, is because Romney couldn't find Kabul on a map if you spotted him the "K" and the "A," as opposed to his running mate, who couldn't find Afghanistan if you dropped him in the Hindu Kush.

Tonight, then, we will see, live and on stage, the existential absurdity of a foreign-policy debate determined entirely by where we are at war, where we were at war, and where we should be at war next. George McGovern, who died over the weekend, god rest his mighty soul, once said that whoever thought of changing the name of the War Department to the Department of Defense should have a statue raised to him on Madison Avenue. (It actually happened in 1949, as part of the National Security Act that had passed two years earlier.) I'm sure there will be some talk about trade with China, and which one of these men will most love to death the European Union and the State of Israel. But the entire context within which anything will be discussed will be military. It is entirely possible that the story in the New York Times on Sunday about possible bilateral talks with Iran will come up, but the White House already has denied it and, on the Sunday talk shows this week (we'll get to more of them later, and have full reports from down in Boca today and tonight), Senator Huckleberry of South Carolina made the Republican position on it quite clear:

GRAHAM: Well I think the Iranians are trying to take advantage of our election cycle to continue to talk. As we talk with the Iranians whether it's bilaterally or unilaterally, they continue to enrich. And the vice president and the president said we will do nothing without coordinating with Israel. So we've talked with them in Moscow. We've talked with them in Baghdad. They continue to enrich. I think the time for talking is over.

Anyone who thinks Romney will depart from this line hasn't been watching the man flex for the cameras over the last year. That there is very little we can do to stop Iran beyond that which we are doing now — assuming, for the moment, that we all don't lose our minds and let somebody commit us to a catastrophic military action that will make the blowback in Iraq feel like a warm spring rain — likely will not come up. The president will say there are certain things he cannot discuss, and Romney will pretend to be tough, and the rest of us will feel the way that we've felt ever since Romney's foreign-policy advisors last had their hands on the machinery of government — as though the foreign policy of the United States is the private preserve of an unaccountable executive branch. We are still on automatic pilot as far as our ability to control the warmaking powers of the people we elect.

The president will talk about demolishing the leadership of al Qaeda, and "the new face of terror," but the possible long-term effects of a war conducted by a robot air force, the possible long-term harm of engaging in remote-controlled slaughter, likely will not be addressed and, if it is, it will not be debated in any true sense of the term. (More on that from Tom Junod here.) Romney will talk about this kabuki weapons gap that he and his running mate have been blathering about, the one that his running mate agreed to as part of his domestic budgetary extortion at the end of last year. Perhaps my favorite argument of all will come up — that we have fewer ships in our Navy now than we had in 1918. Jesus, boys, give me one Trident submarine and a functioning time machine, send me back to 1918, and I'll be emperor of the world before lunch. Foreign policy will be all about defense, all about weapons, all about the how's and where's of making war. The debate therefore will be limited and largely in vain.

Trade is foreign policy. The environment is foreign policy. Energy policy is foreign policy. Human rights are foreign policy. Drought is foreign policy. Starvation is foreign policy. War is generally only foreign policy when one of those other things I mentioned get completely out of control. However, as I suspect we will see argued enthusiastically from both sides tonight, war, and not its historic causes, has come to define foreign policy. Increasingly, it has come to define us as a nation as well. This is a problem that, I predict, will not be addressed at all this evening in Boca Raton, where the rich people play and the children of their gardeners fight our wars.